


Book Club.

by afogocado



Category: Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Christmas Fluff, Eventual Romance, Eventual Smut, F/M, Fluff, Holidays, Humor
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:55:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,707
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27784072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/afogocado/pseuds/afogocado
Summary: The Book Club for Irresponsible Bibliophiles has a two-part rule:[1.1] You must own more books than you know what to do with; and,[1.2] Your toxic trait must be collecting more books, even though you don’t read the ones you already have.The book club has an easy routine: keep your literary list as updated as possible, and compare notes with fellow members. Whichever title everyone shares at any given moment is the book of the week.The book club is intimate: just you, your best friend Padmé, and her sisters. But then, Padmé suggests someone new join the group.The book club is surprised: said friend is not another woman, but rather sweater-wearing Ben Kenobi: chronically kind, handsome-but-he-probably-doesn’t-know-it, and recently divorced.The holidays quickly approach, and the group’s Secret Santa game has a gift caveat: no books or stationary allowed. You draw Ben. And what begins as an attempt to get to know him a bit better—so you can find the right present—grows into something more.
Relationships: Obi-Wan Kenobi/Reader, Padmé Amidala/Anakin Skywalker
Comments: 12
Kudos: 64





	Book Club.

\--

The frost came early this year, and you trace several loops into the steely window pane; some hearts and stars. You start spelling out your name in this clumsy and whirling script, then erase it and the doodles with your hoodie sleeve. You will yourself to enjoy these moments of cold silence—time turning before the coffee shop’s‘Closed’ sign is flipped to ‘Open’. And listening to the steady and reliable gurgle-drip as the day’s first batch of house coffee brews. Roger meows softly from the back, and you watch him pad down the stairs with a quiet ease, his white and gray fur looking extra fluffy this morning.

You curl your fingers around your steaming mug of tea and fight the pre-sunrise chill out of your bones. Your fluffy socks and leggings can only do so much. And even though the cafe is stuffed tight and cozy with tables and chairs and bookshelves and plants, it just feels drafty today. You breathe in the comforting jasmine and green scent heating your palms, the steam wafting into your nose and down your throat. The beverage’s warmth creeps a hot trail down not long after. Roger meows again and stares at you with a sternness you’ve never seen from another human or animal. He turns around and starts pawing at the pastry display’s glass casing, before looking back at you over his shoulder and meadows again, kneading at the curved glass. The treats you’d baked earlier in the hour, all nestled near one another and waiting for a hungry patron.

“We go through this every morning, Rog--you can’t have a scone.”

A sad, wailing meow reverberates throughout the dark cafe, like you’ve told him he needs to get out of your life before the day even starts. You move over to him and place the mug on the counter and crouch, offering your tea-warm hand to the grouchy Maine Coon cat and he settles away from the glass and presses his head into your palm. Another sad meow for the forbidden snack—he’s been covetous of the scones ever since he’s been your’s, and all he wants to do with them is bat them around on the floor until they crumble into a million scattered pieces.

“We’ll have visitors and customers soon, and they’re all going to want those.”

Roger looks at you with his mismatched, foggy eyes—the vet says he’s blind in the one, but it doesn’t bother him in the slightest—his unamused gaze telling you he doesn’t give a shit about what other people want.

“I know you don’t,” you tell him and boop his nose. He blinks hard at you and patters away, back up the steps and into the apartment you share over the top of the coffee shop. You know he’ll lay on a pile of not-dirty/but-not-totally-clean clothes, and sleep the day away. Such is his difficult life.

And yours isn’t really much more difficult than his: you get up earlier than most, get the food and some of the drink ready, sell it all, and end your day by seven in the evening. The cafe is something you inherited from a favorite grandparent—you’d had other plans in your life, but none ever solid enough, and none ever as safe as this. It was always easy to run this place, and your home was right above it, and everything you’d ever need could easily be found in the quaint downtown district just beyond the windows. You’d earned a random business certificate from online courses and knew how to do the bookkeeping and every other random thing associated with running a small business.

The coffee shop was also partly responsible for dissolving your marriage before it even happened. Your fiancé was gung-ho on talking you into selling it so you both could take the money and move to a larger, busier city. You’d had no interest in that. The cafe was filled with history: some of it that both did and did not belong to you. How could you ever get rid of something like that? He’d told you that you were being far too sentimental—that your false nostalgia and feelings would wind up ruining you and his futures, and your future together, because he would always resent you for keeping him tied down here.

You didn’t need to keep a staff because you never got so busy like the more popular coffeehouse chains, but you did have one friend who came in from time to time to help out just because she needed to get out of the house. Padmé decided to take a break from the workforce while her twin children were infants, but now that they were almost three and her husband was able to have a more flexible work schedule, she was easing her way out of the hours for small hours at a time to see how the family faired without her until she was able to return to a more steady work schedule at the metro council.

—

Padmé comes in before you flip the sign, pink-faced and smiling bright at you. She tugs her scarf from her neck and says, “It’s so cold in here, haven’t you turned the heat on yet?”

“I thought it was set to come on automatically.”

“Looks like it hasn’t.” She goes to turn it on and cranks it up, and you pour her a cup of house coffee—black, just the way she’s always preferred.

“Sorry to make you take care of another child.”

“You’re not a child; just a bit scatterbrained.”

“Speaking of children, how are Luke and Leia?”

Padmé smiles broadly and pulls her phone out from her back pocket to scroll through the latest photographs. You lean in next to her and watch over her shoulder and she shows you pictures from the weekend: Luke and Leia climbing all over their father, one twin on each of his shoulders; the twins blowing bubbles into each others’ faces; the twins frowning and pouting over the green beans on their dinner plates; and Leia with someone you’ve never seen before: an older man with golden-red, auburn hair spilling over his forehead, matching the scruff growing into a beard. Leia is hanging out against one of his shoulders, her small chubby hand clutching a plain pancake, as though waving it around in victory. The stranger is holding a spatula in his other hand, standing over the stove, and smiling with too many teeth. Padmé goes to the next photograph, but you see nothing—you’re still too distracted by the previous one.

“Wait, who was that? In the last one?”

Padmé smiles at you like she’s up to something—the way she always smiles when you do something or say something that intrigues her. She scrolls back and shows you the beautiful stranger, and this time you notice he’s wearing a navy blue tank top, his upper arms both done up in tattoos that you can’t quite make out, his shoulders freckle-kissed, and muscles drawn taut from holding a toddler and cooking breakfast. And you feel yourself flush and your heart race.

“Yeah, him,” you breathe out.

“That’s Ani’s older brother. He’s moved back home recently. He’s here through the holidays, I mean. Staying with us.”

“Oh,” is all you’re able to say.

You hadn’t known many details about Anakin’s past—Padmé told you that he didn’t have much in the way of family. That his mother passed away when he was still a child, and he’d been adopted by a family friend who’d already had an adult son. And the adult son—once the father passed—took up the mantle as the patriarch in their small clan of two, and raised Anakin to young adulthood. And supported the younger man throughout his time in college where Anakin met Padmé: she’d studied political science, Anakin’d studied mechanical engineering. The brother had gotten married, and moved across the country shortly after.

Padmé goes back to her phone and scrolls and swipes until she finds older pictures. You know they’re old because Anakin has long hair in them, instead of the precise undercut he’s favored in recent years. Anakin’s pulled into his brother’s side awkwardly, as he’s a bit taller than the other man (who sports a full beard this time, and you swallow a gasp at his prettiness) and they’re in matching ugly Christmas sweaters.

“Wait,” you lean closer to Padmé and all but squint at the newest—or oldest—photo of the brother wearing longer hair tucked behind his ears and a fuller beard, looking up at Anakin proudly on what appeared to be Anakin’s graduation day.

“Is that Ben Kenobi?”

Padmé looks at you, jarred with a raised eyebrow, obviously confused because you both know you’d never met him before. “Yeah, do you know him somehow?”

“No. Yes? Well, kind of? I saw one of his books when I was in the bookshop the other day.”

“Oh, yes. He’s published a new one for the holidays.”

“I didn’t know you knew him. Let alone that he was part of the family.”

“I didn’t know you were a fan of children’s books,” Padmé says innocently, that familiar teasing glint in her eye.

You give her a droll look that says ‘please’. “They’re hard to miss—they’re always displayed right when you walk in. They always look so cute. I picked one up the other day; I wanted to get it for the twins for Christmas, and saw his picture at the back.”

“He’s very handsome,” Padmé says, bumping your shoulder with hers.

“What?” And that flush again: the one that obviously means nothing.

“Nothing! You’ll just…get a chance to meet him today. Ani’s bringing him and the kids in later to grab some coffee before they shop for presents.”

“It’s not even December yet!”

“You know Anakin,” Padmé sighs, but its a fond sound rather than an exasperated one. “This is his favorite time of year.”

It is. You know this because there is an annual argument over Anakin wanting to set up the Christmas tree the day after Halloween.

“And to be fair,” Padmé says, moving towards the front door and flipping the ‘Closed’ sign to ‘Open’. “December’s in just a couple days.”

—

You see the two men come in before Padmé does, as she’s manning the register at the moment. Each is holding one of the Skywalker twins in one arm and staring up at the chalkboard menu. The twins are bored and twist about in their respective caregiver’s embrace, fussing over the Santa Claus hats that the adults dressed them in this morning. Padmé told Anakin that it was too early in the season to have the kids wearing their Santa hats, but Anakin had flipped over how adorable they were, and insisted that once Thanksgiving was over, then the twins were going to wear the hats whenever he felt compelled to dress them as such.

“Daddy: crackers, please,” Luke says, tugging at the little baubles of Anakin’s hat, which is a poorly crocheted Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.

“No, baby. We’ll have crackers later.” Anakin cups his palm behind the back of Luke’s head and Luke whines, bopping his forehead into his father’s neck in adorable defeat. He sneaks a glance at his twin, and they share a look, as though silently communicating the next stage of their plan.

“Uncle Nobi,” Leia says, clutching at the lapels on his vest to gather his attention. The way she calls out to him is quite business-like, as though shifting the mood of the conversation entirely.

“What is it, sweet lass?” Ben Kenobi presses his fingertip onto the tip of her nose and wriggles it until she giggles her response:

“Crackers. Please.”

Ben smiles down at her, and then arches a sassy eyebrow up at his brother and asks in a clipped, but mock stern voice, pronouncing each syllable of the other’s man’s name with practiced precision. “Anakin, do you never feed your children?” His eyes are a sparkling bright cyan, and you clutch an empty paper cup in your sweating hand as you continue watching the altercation.

“Too much. They go bananas over crackers! I fear they only love me because I give them so many.”

“Not to worry, at least they say ‘please’. Congratulations, Anakin—you have extraordinarily polite children.”

“Congratulations, Daddy,” Luke says, clutching at the fuzzy dangling ball from Anakin’s hat in his chubby hands.

“Yeah,” Leia echoes. “Congratulations, Daddy,” she reaches up to grab at Obi-Wan’s auburn beard. He chuckles and gently catches her little hand in his, kissing the back of it before letting it go.

“I heard,” Ben starts looking at Leia, and then her brother, “that this shop sells special gingerbread cookies.”

The twins’ heads whip around to face one another immediately, then their gazes lock onto their uncle’s face as he squints up at the menu once more. They decide—silently and together—that gingerbread cookies would be an acceptable replacement to their beloved crackers.

“You have glasses for a reason, Old Man,” Anakin reminds him, reaching over and tugging the black frames loose from Ben’s front vest pocket.

“Oh, yes. Thank you, Anakin,” Ben jerks the folded frames open with one hand and then presses them up the bridge of his nose, and you feel your mouth go dry watching him do this. And you swallow hard when his gaze moves from the menu, and then to you. “Would you tell the little ones that sometimes gingerbread is better than crackers?” His free hand moves to push his hair back from his forehead, and you lean against the counter. It almost looks suave.

Your heart hammers in your chest—surely he isn’t speaking and smiling directly at you?

“Uh,” you start, stopping yourself from stammering out something embarrassing.

But you are rescued by Padmé, who sweeps over and coos out her delight that her family’s come to see her, and you busy yourself with the pastry counter, pulling out two of the smaller gingerbread person cookies and hoping that Roger doesn’t sneak by and bat one of the scones to the floor. Padmé takes Leia out of Ben’s arms while you aren’t looking and when you emerge from your crouched position with the cookies on a napkin, Ben is smiling down at you with flushed cheeks and a pink nose, his fingers running lines over and over his beard, watching your nervous hands set the napkin on the counter by the register.

“And…two large coffees to go, please?” He asks, handing his debit card to you.

“Your plastic money is no good here,” you say, waving his card away.

He wrinkles his nose at this and cocks his head to the side. “I assure you, there’s very real money on this card, Miss.”

“That’s not what I meant,” you say quickly, wishing you could swallow your words. “I meant—”

“I’m only teasing you,” he says, humming out his amusement before tucking his card back into the slot behind his phone. The phone returns to his front vest pocket. His fingertips trap the napkin against the counter, and he slides the cookies close, breaking off an arm and chewing slowly all the while looking at you. “Uncle Tax taste test,” he explains once he brushes a few rogue crumbs out of his scruff.

Once the Skywalker chattering is wrapped up, Leia is passed back to Uncle Nobi, and he gives her the rest of the gingerbread cookie. She frowns at it after seeing that Luke’s is whole, and Ben tells her that this cookie was born without an arm. She almost accepts this. And then Anakin takes a bite out of Luke’s to prevent any meltdowns that may come from the kids not having the same cookies.

The twins are set on the floor and they clutch at their cookies with both hands while the men steer them by their shoulders and sip at their coffee with their free hands.

“I’ll see you all later,” Padmé says, watching them move closer to the door. “Remember I have book club with your aunties tonight.”

“Congratulations, Mommy!” The twins say, muffled from chomping on their gingerbread people.

—


End file.
